Alternatives to
Alternatives to Taormina: every coastal town in Sicily, in one list
14 towns · 1 region · the complete list
Lipari, Sicily
Taormina earned its reputation and then a television series doubled the price of it. Sicily has a thousand kilometres of coast and most of it is small towns with a Greek name and a fish market and a beach nobody has fenced yet.
Every Sicilian coastal and island town in our catalogue under twenty thousand people, 14 of them, with Taormina and Cefalù removed. Best-recognised first.
Instead of Taormina
Taormina · 10,471 residents · Sicilia
- LipariMessina
Island town · UNESCO
- Residents
- 12,565
- When to go
- May–Oct
- SavocaMessina
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Taormina
- 30m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 1,724
- When to go
- May–Oct
- RealmonteAgrigento
Coastal town · Borgo dei Borghi
- From Taormina
- 2h 58m by car
- Residents
- 4,378
- When to go
- May–Oct
- CastelmolaMessina
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Taormina
- 27m by car
- Residents
- 1,062
- When to go
- May–Oct
- Forza d'AgròMessina
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Taormina
- 48m by car
- Residents
- 835
- When to go
- May–Oct
The 5 best-recognised of the 14 towns that match. Drive times measured by road from Taormina. More of them follow below.
Lipari
Province: Messina · 44 m
The largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.
Savoca
Province: Messina · 300 m
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian, its ridge lined with stepped lanes and balconied stone houses.
Realmonte
Province: Agrigento · 153 m
The Agrigento coast commune with the white marl cliff of the Scala dei Turchi and a salt mine carved into 5-million-year-old halite.
Castelmola
Province: Messina · 529 m
A rock village at 529 meters directly above Taormina, the upper acropolis of ancient Tauromenium with a Norman castle and a 1947 almond-wine bar.
Forza d'Agrò
Province: Messina · 420 m
A ridge village of 835 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, its Norman fortress silhouette gave the place its name centuries before a film crew arrived.
Castroreale
Province: Messina · 394 m
A ridge town at 394 meters above the Milazzo plain, holding the royal name given to it in the fourteenth century and a second-place finish in the 2018 Borgo dei Borghi.
Pantelleria
Province: Trapani · 8 m
A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
San Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani · 5 m
A three-kilometer white-sand beach at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.
Lampedusa e Linosa
Province: Agrigento · 25 m
Italy's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.
The rest of the 14
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